Self Regulation Study

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Self Regulation Study

• Meng Li
• Department of Psychology,
• Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

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Self-regulation
Self regulation is the attempt to control or
alter ones own responses.
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Strength Model of Self-regulation

• Self regulation capacity is limited at any moment
  
• Controlling attention to ignore irrelevant
  stimuli leads to worse performance on concurrent
  task, compared to naturally ignoring the same
  stimuli (Gilbert, Krull Pelham 1988).
• Self regulation capacity can be depleted over
  time
• Initial act of self-regulation impairs ability to
  regulate the self immediately afterwards
  (Muraven, Tice Baumeister 1998).
• All forms of self-regulation draws on the same
  resource
• Single dimension of self-regulatory resource,
  including traditional measures like delay of
  gratification and endurance of physical
  discomfort (Eysenck 1960)

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How does self-regulation relate to other
constructs?
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Executive Function

• (Norman, D.A. Shallice, T. 1980)
• Those that involve planning or decision making.
• Situations which require the overcoming of a
  strong habitual response or resisting temptation.
  ---How long did you wait for the second cookie
  when you were 4? (Mitchell 1988)
• Situations where responses are not well-learned
  or contain novel sequences of actions. ----Are
  you good at analytical thinking? (Schmeichel,
  Vohs Baumeister 2003)?
• Those that involve error correction or
  troubleshooting.
• Dangerous or technically difficult situations.

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Self-regulation --- system 2 ?

• System 1 are typically fast, automatic,
  effortless, associative, implicit (not available
  to introspection), and often emotionally charged
  they are also governed by habit and are therefore
  difficult to control or modify.
• System 2 are slower, serial, effortful, more
  likely to be consciously monitored and
  deliberately controlled they are also relatively
  flexible and potentially rule governed.

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Research question

• Do other system 2- processes draw on
  self-regulatory resource?
• If so, depletion of the self-regulatory resource
  should lead to Failure of the conscious,
  cognitive system 2 processes (executive
  functioning), the default operation of system 1
  would thus result in biases.
• Decision making bias derived from intuitive
  responses honoring sunken cost, status quo bias
• Social perception bias due to cognitive
  short-cuts correspondence bias
• Behavior dominated by physical drive choice of
  caloric food

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Research question

• What construct captures individual differences in
  self regulation?
• Impulse control ability?
• Cognitive capacity?

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Experiment Design

• Design 2x2x2 between subjects.
• Experimental Manipulation
• Self-regulation task vs. control
• Dependent measures
• Performance in decision making task
• Performance in social judgment task
• Choice of food
• Moderators
• Trait self-controlhigh vs. low in Self-Control
  scale
• Cognitive capacityhigh vs. low in Need For
  Cognition scale

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Methods

• 88 Rutgers Undergraduate students taking General
  Psychology.
• Conducted in classroom after last class before
  final exam.

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Procedures

• Depletion of self-regulatory resource
• Subjects in experimental group will be asked to
  write about their activity in the past day for 7
  minutes, without using neither letter a nor
  letter n
• Subjects in control group will simply be asked to
  write about their activity in the past day for 7
  minutes. Without further instructions.
• Then, subjects completed questionnaire consisting
  series decision making and person perception
  tasks.

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Results sunk cost effect

• Please imagine the following two scenarios
• Situation X You are staying alone in a hotel
  room. You have paid 6.95 to see a movie on pay
  TV. After 15 minutes you are bored, the movie
  seems pretty bad, and there are other things on
  regular TV to watch that might be more enjoyable.
  
• Would you continue to watch the movie or not?
• a. I would continue to watch the movie
• b. I would switch to another channel
• Situation Y You are staying alone in a hotel
  room. You turn on the TV and there is a movie on.
  After 15 minutes you are bored, the movie seems
  pretty bad, and there are other things on regular
  TV to watch that might be more enjoyable.
• Would you continue to watch the movie or not?
• a. I would continue to watch the movie
• b. I would switch to another channel

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(No Transcript)
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Results status quo bias

• Imagine the following scenario
• You are currently an assistant professor at
  College A in the mid-west. Recently, you have
  been approached by colleagues at other
  universities with job opportunities.
• Your choices are
• a) Remain at College A low prestige school,
  moderate salary, very good chance of tenure.
• b) College B west coast, low prestige school,
  high salary, good chance of tenure.
• c) College C east coast, very prestigious
  school, high salary, fair chance of tenure.
• d) College D west coast, prestigious school,
  moderate salary, good chance of tenure.
• What would you choose _____

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Results status quo bias
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Results Correspondence Bias

• Sam is a member of the college debate team. The
  team has won a series of competitions this year
  and is preparing for the final national college
  debate contest. The topic for the final debate is
  How practical is Nuclear Power now and for the
  future? and the side Sam team has been assigned
  to is ANTI-NUCLEAR POWER. The debate coach
  assigned Sam the job of writing an anti-nuclear
  essay, and emphasized on making it as eloquent as
  possible.
• Below is an excerpt from Sams essay.

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Correspondence Bias
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Food choice
OR
Chi square test p0.184
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Individual Differences

• Trait self-control
• Cognitive capacity
• No significant effect on sunk-cost effect, status
  quo bias or correspondence bias.
• Correlation of the two scores r .279, Plt.01

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Why study 1 failed

• Manipulation
• Not strong enough/too strong that no one
  followed---changed to crossing out letter e
• Measures
• Bad question for Status quo bias.
• Person perception questions confusing to
  subjects.
• Too many tasks after depletion.

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Suggestions

• Better design
• Better decision questions
• Better hypothesis